


Such Is Life

by BlueStarAtSunrise



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers AU, Avengers Tower, Brief mention of mental illness, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Gen, Loki gets what he needs, Loki’s family actually tries to act like a family, Marvel Alternate Universe - Freeform, Marvel Cinematic Universe - Freeform, Mostly humor, Odin’s Raven’s are stalking Loki, POV Loki (Marvel), SHIELD are kinda assholes, The Avengers - Freeform, Thor and technology do not mix, Tony Tries to Help, brief mention of torture/brainwashing, mcu - Freeform, they actually ask what happened
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 10:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19789489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueStarAtSunrise/pseuds/BlueStarAtSunrise
Summary: Things had gone better for Loki than he’d ever expected. After the truth came out about what really caused his disastrous invasion of Earth, he was able to get help that he desperately needed. Now he wants to give help in return; but he hadn’t anticipated certain....interesting....challenges.It began with Thor and Midgardian technology...





	Such Is Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Latent_Thoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Latent_Thoughts), [wrathkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrathkitty/pseuds/wrathkitty), [Ohhhmyloki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohhhmyloki/pseuds/Ohhhmyloki), and [DevilishDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilishDoll/pseuds/DevilishDoll) for help and inspiration!

Things had gone better for Loki than he’d ever expected. After his disastrous invasion of Earth, he had been taken back to Asgard. Before his trial, Frigga had insisted that he be checked over by a healer; it was then discovered that he had been tortured and that his mind showed traces of influence by the mind stone. Even Odin had softened toward him after he had seen that; especially when Loki finally remembered that it was Thanos and his minions who had done this to him; which had scared everyone. 

Experience had taught Loki to be skeptical; and he suspected that Odin‘s softening wasn’t entirely due to benevolence and paternal love. He knew Odin didn’t care much for humans; especially with the way he griped about Thor and Jane. Loki had learned his prejudice towards them from somewhere, after all.

.

While Loki was kept in the healing wing receiving treatment, rumors of what had really happened to him had begun to circulate around the city pretty quickly (he suspected some of the healers he had helped learn the ways of Seidr and had been friendly with had started them). Many people, especially Seidr users and common people, (he had angered too many of the nobles in the past by tricking them into exposing their own hypocrisy) made it known that they were sympathetic to his plight. Throwing a would be conqueror who had tried to invade a world without the AllFather‘s permission into the dungeon was very different from doing it to a victim of brainwashing and torture. If word had spread that Loki was being mistreated after what happened to him, it could’ve been deeply disastrous to the reputation of Asgard and its monarchy. 

Loki was found not guilty due to extenuating circumstances. He was helped with healing and therapy. The chief healer, Eir, had said that she felt that the strain of everything that had happened before he fell meant Loki wasn’t fully in his right mind during the whole Bifrost incident either. Luckily, after that incident, Odin had invented a clever story about that that involved Loki keeping the Frost Giants away and dying to protect Asgard; and no one else had found out about his true ancestry. In fact, many people considered him a hero for having killed Laufey, and then for having survived the nightmares of the void.

Asgard as well as other realms were now preparing to go to war should Thanos come by. Asgard had allied with Earth, explained the situation, and offered help as well as many resources to both advance the planet and to fix the damage that had been done.

Odin had retrieved both the Scepter and the Tesseract from Earth. This did not sit well with certain parties. The World Security Council and SHIELD, (especially Nick fury and some of his bosses), were difficult at first. They were still smarting from the loss of the Tesseract, the Scepter, and Loki (the worst of them had hoped to get him after the invasion and literally dissect him). They had tried to deny that they had been using the Tesseract to make weapons, that their activities could’ve drawn Thanos (and by extension Loki and the Chitauri) and had tried to blame Loki for everything, including the nuke. But they couldn’t do much against the power of Asgard or the irrefutable evidence. Asgard also gave them some technology and other resources and allowed them to keep what they had salvaged from the Chitauri.

Tony Stark had also unexpectedly come to Loki’s aid. After Loki had sincerely and profusely apologized for the window incident, and Tony had accepted, the god and the billionaire had struck up a surprising friendship (Tony insisted that Loki showing him how to work advanced alien technology both with and without magic as well as how to play better pranks had nothing to do with this). Stark had threatened to publicly expose the truth about who was really responsible for the incident with the nuke, as well as certain other secrets. So finally, the organizations had backed down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still, Loki had felt guilty and wanted to make amends. While it was true that the scepter had influenced him heavily, and Thanos had twisted him and his memories; the way it had happened was that it had amplified his darker tendencies and negative feelings, while shriveling his compassion and other positive feelings to almost zero; as well as fueling his hatred. The way Loki saw it, if he hadn’t had such a huge darker side and so many unresolved negative feelings he hadn’t dealt with, neither Thanos nor the scepter would’ve been able to influence him as much or twist as many of his memories into negativity. Quite a lot to expect, since he did have some legitimate gripes, and even the Avengers hadn’t been immune to the influence of the scepter; it had affected them within minutes. But this was Loki’s though process, and he was pretty sure his unique circumstances were not much of a consolation to the families of people that had died because of his actions.

While some of his detractors had tried to put his death count into the thousands, the official count was 155 (although it later turned out that Coulson was alive). To his own surprise, Loki found that he genuinely wanted to try to make amends, repair some of his relationships and make more positive memories. While he was the god of mischief, he wanted to be more. He had started working to help the Avengers. Public opinion about him was split, but the more he helped, the more it shifted in his favor. He even had more than a few admirers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So here he was, living in Stark Tower and doing his best to help out; yet he had run into a problem he had not expected. The problem had to do with his brother and Midgardian technology; two things that apparently did not go well together.

It had all started when Thor had been eager to give a Loki a tour of his floor of Stark Tower. He had started with the kitchen. Loki still cringed at the memory. “And this,” Thor had announced happily, “is called a toaster. I’m going to put those Pop Tart treats I told you about inside. It will warm them up nicely and then we can share them.” Loki had seen what was about to happen right before it happened, but his yelling of “Thor you idiot, don’t do that” had been drowned out by the following explosion and fizzing. Loki had literally been running around like a Chicken with his head cut off trying to put out a kitchen fire. Stark had alternated between squawking like an offended bird about the damage to his kitchen, and complementing Loki on his truly impressive multilingual string of curse words.

The incidences had only increased from there. Thor meant well, but he was like a bull in a China shop when it came to Earth technology. Contrary to what Loki often joked about, Thor was far from stupid. He understood the principle of most of the appliances he tried to operate; and he could follow the directions just fine. But when he tried to do it in practice, for whatever reason, things just went wrong. And when he got overexcited or frustrated, electricity poured from his fingertips, and things tended to get fried. Everybody liked Thor, but the idea of their general living area going up in flames seriously concerned them.

The microwave was the next appliance to make the noble sacrifice. When on Asgard, Loki had mostly eaten what the Palace chefs made. He had decided to learn to cook a couple of random desserts on his own, and when he found that this impressed potential lovers, he decided to learn to cook more; although he mostly kept it secret because he didn’t feel like being teased for it by Thor’s friends. When he came to Midgard however, he realized he needed his cooking skills more than ever. While he liked occasionally eating out, he felt that none of the other inhabitants of Stark tower could cook worth a damn. So in order to satisfy his aristocratic palate, he had taken to cooking most of his food himself. Thor noticed this, and, remembering how pleasant his time cooking with Jane had been, and wanting to surprise her with more, had asked Loki to teach him to cook better. Loki had sighed, muttered a prayer to the Norns, and tried to do just that. It had ended with the microwave in pieces; though as Loki had pointed out, it wasn’t entirely Thor’s fault that nobody had bothered to explain to him that putting a metal plate inside of it was a bad idea. At least it’s end had been quick, and Loki had managed to save most of the surrounding area. 

This was followed by an exploding hairdryer that sent several of the inhabitants of the tower running for cover, bursting televisions, sprinkler systems gone awry, and Tony’s suits randomly chasing people. Jarvis whimpered whenever Thor was anywhere near his controls (Tony wonder how this was even possible); and DUM-E had gone on strike. The worst was when Banner had gotten the brilliant idea that Thor needed to learn how to drive. After Loki had absolutely refused to get into a car with him, Banner took it upon himself to do the teaching. Stark still refused to speak to Banner after what had happened to his car, which now appeared to be possessed, if it’s electrical system randomly coming to life and terrifying people was anything to go by. Loki had advised Stark to get rid of it; but Tony was still trying to figure out if there was a way he could make money off of it. 

Everybody seemed to turn to Loki and expect him to fix the situations and keep his brother in line when it came to technology. This was admittedly very strange for him, because for most of his life, it had been the other way around. 

“Loki? Loki wake up!” “Go away Stark, it’s 3am!” Loki snapped. 

“No way, Reindeer Games! Not when my living room is still full of smoke!” 

Loki groaned. “What now?” 

“Thor tried to program the DVR,” Stark explained, “I watched him read the instruction manual and I swear he was following the directions. I can’t tell you what happened after that-and neither can Thor. One minute we’re talking, and the next minute, the entire TV system is short circuiting.” 

“Do you not have fire extinguishers?!” came the grumpy reply.

“Well yes; but we’ve done all we can with them. It’s up to you and your magic bag of tricks now.” The sound of thunder was suddenly heard above them. Stark grinned apologetically, “Oh yeah, and Point Break isn’t too happy right now.”

Loki just sighed; not for the first time, he wondered if perhaps he should’ve just begged Odin to put him in the dungeons; or if he should just hightail it to another realm and hide. Vanaheimr was very nice this time of year, after all. 

As he dressed quickly, he heard a noise, and looked up to see Odin’s two huge Ravens perched near his slightly open window. They were looking down at him and cackling hysterically. “I still haven’t ruled out cooking either one of you!“ he hissed at them. The Ravens only cackled louder. Loki flashed them both a rude gesture before spinning on his heel and marching out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Loki being influenced by the scepter is canon. From the MCU website: “Gifted with a Scepter that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the Scepter was also influencing him, fueling his hatred over his brother Thor and the inhabitants of Earth.”
> 
> In canon, Loki’s “family” never even asked what happened to him after he tried to kill himself. Tom Hiddleston on what happen to Loki after he fell:
> 
> “I think he went, like with everything else, to—Joss Whedon and I discussed it—to a sort of… it was just, like, the worst place imaginable. I think he went to, sort of, all of the darkest recesses of the universe. I’m sure he had a brush with—several brushes with death. I think he ran into the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. It was really, really, really unpleasant, I think. I don’t have any frame of reference for that, except for imagining what it might be like to be kidnapped by a terrorist or something and have to survive a very, very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for The Avengers, that whatever compassion he had left was absolutely shriveled to a minimum because of the experience that he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life—in a way that Thor and Odin and Frigga find very, very difficult to understand.”


End file.
